Catching his breath, Webb put the child down and switched on the 1MC. "Attention all hands, attention all hands," he announced breathlessly, voice crackling from speakers throughout the ship, "this is Commander Alton Webb speaking. This is an emergency. I hereby order all security personnel to report to the main deck. There are… enemy insurgents aboard." He didn't know how to put it so as not to sound stark raving mad. "They have infiltrated members of the crew and are attempting to take over the ship. Please acknowledge this message."
There was no reply; the speaker remained silent.
Suddenly, he heard a muffled voice in his ear, as if inches away: "C'mon, Al, get with the program."
Webb nearly jumped out of his shoes, spinning in the direction of the voice. There was no one there. Of course-the room was much too small for anyone to hide. Was the kid a ventriloquist? He checked the shower-empty.
"Who the fuck was that?" he demanded.
Moon-eyed, the boy raised his skinny chicken arm and pointed a grubby, accusing finger at the plundered captain's safe. Webb's safe now, for what it was worth; Alton Webb's personal keep, with its scorched door from which the lock had been gouged like an offending eye, leaving an ugly black peephole.
"No fuckin' way," Webb said, yanking it open.
"How ya doin', Al?" quacked Fred Cowper's severed head, staring out at him with great black fish eyes. Cowper's mouth yawned open to a grotesque degree, splitting the old man's face from ear to ear like the exaggerated jaws of some primordial sea creature, one of those deep-sea monstrosities with teeth as huge and sharp as a cocked bear trap-a ravenous Pac-Man.
Webb slammed the door on the dreadful specter-OhGodohmyGod-and recoiled backward, holding his gun out at arm's length and training it on the safe. Before he could decide whether to scream, cry, or just go raving bat-shit, he heard a crackling sound beside him and turned to see the kid. What he saw, rising nearly to the ceiling, was beyond all comprehension.
Now Alton Webb did scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BLUE SUEDE
The Blue Man's day-to-day routine was simple:
He rolled out of bed when he wanted to, had a leisurely breakfast of tea and stale donuts, then moseyed across the cylinder to his pit latrine, where he did his business while reading a paperback copy of Boswell's London Journal. After that he washed up, polished off a chapter of Cellini's autobiography, added several more pages of closely written script to his own extensive notes, and had a light lunch. Then, if he felt like it, he might leave the cylinder to make his rounds of the garage and the wider city. These could consist of something as simple as raiding the Mr. Donut Dumpster in the alley or fetching water from the sink in the employee restroom. Or they might require more stealth, such as making a run across the pedestrian overpass to the Biltmore Hotel. You never knew who might be watching.
The habits born of years of vagrancy served him well. Truly, not much had changed: He had been a fugitive before, and he was still a fugitive.
In bygone days, the man known only as Old Joe Blue had been a familiar figure downtown, and particularly well-known in transient circles, where he was even more an object of curiosity than he was in the world of "squares"-homeless society being necessarily insular and mutually reliant. But Joe wandered in and out of their company with the same ghostlike detachment as he did everywhere else, partaking of charity handouts, freebies, and day jobs, then vanishing back into the ether.
Where did he live? Who was he, and who had he been? Since Old Joe didn't panhandle or sleep on the street, the system generally left him alone, but what was wrong with him? Argyria-an overload of colloidal silver-was the official explanation, but how, when, and why? The man himself was not clear about specifics. One rumor was that he was a former silversmith from one of the old factories in the Jewelry District, and had developed metal toxicity from years of breathing the vapors. When the factory closed its doors (as so many had, in the age of Kmart, Wal-Mart, and cheap imports) he was thrown out like an old pair of shoes-blue suede shoes, they joked. This story was certainly more plausible than Joe's own explanations, which were rambling diatribes about doomsday and salvation-the man was a notorious crackpot. But few dared to contradict him, and anyone who did challenge that eerie shambling figure had an odd way of never being heard from again. So people left him alone, and the more superstitious ones crossed themselves in his wake.
"Wormwood," Joe might mutter, standing in a soup line. "Read your Book of Revelation. Most comets are like dirty snowballs, just ice and dust. But not that one, no, that comet there is a Trojan horse. Don't you get it? It shouldn't have come anywhere near us, it's on a whole different trajectory, but it changed, it zigged. Do you understand what that means?" When people started edging away, he would shake his head, mumbling, "Dodos-dodo birds."
Old Joe's lifestyle was flexible enough to accommodate not only the end of human civilization, but a guest to share it with. Noah didn't build the ark just for himself, Joe reasoned. So in his fits of hoarding he stored away enough provisions for at least two people to weather an extended siege-which was exactly what he had been preparing for all these years. The boy didn't eat much. With minor replenishment, Joe figured they were good for at least four months. Plenty of time for the last vestiges of the old world to be scoured away.
For it was only then that his life's work could truly begin.
"Here, look at this, look here," Joe said, showing Bobby his trove of old magazines. Pulling out a moldy issue of National Geographic, he said, "Take a look at this cover story about Saturn-the Cassini mission: 'On July 14, 2005, the spacecraft descended to a hundred miles above Enceladus's south polar region. Data indicated that plumes of material were erupting near the south pole. Then, four months later, Cassini made images that showed geyser like eruptions of water vapor and ice particles shooting far out into space.' Unquote."
When Bobby didn't react, he grew impatient. "Do you see what I'm saying? Enceladus! Here we thought it was only Jupiter's moon Europa that had liquid water and the potential for life, but now we learn that Saturn has its own salad bowl-the moon Enceladus. Picture it: an aquatic race living in perpetual darkness, in a hydrothermal ocean under miles of ice. It's a womb down there, a whole damn amniotic planet. They live and grow in that fishbowl for millions of years, competing against one another, developing tools and higher intelligence, until one day one of them starts to wonder what's above that frozen ceiling? Does it go on forever, to infinity? And maybe they kill that guy for heresy, and the next guy and the next guy, but eventually space starts running short-see, it's a very small moon, just three hundred miles wide-and they start thinking seriously about the possibility of other oceans in the ice, other worlds to conquer. Meanwhile, their science develops to the point where they can start drilling boreholes long enough to reach the surface. Eureka."
The old man sat back, nodding. "Do you see now? They send a ship. Not a ship of metal but a ship of ice. Ice! Forging it, smelting it like metal, building it up layer by layer like a beehive. An artificial comet. Maybe their whole race inside, a billion of 'em, who knows? We saw it being launched, we tracked it… and then we forgot about it. But not everybody forgot, oh no. Some have been keeping an eye on that thing. We saw when it used Jupiter as a sling-shot to accelerate, and when it altered its course. That's when we lost it, but the projections don't lie. Oh yes, it was always aiming for more temperate regions, and one hot spot in particular, the Florida of the solar system, with an ocean that could practically swallow up their whole planet.
"How do you fight something like that?" Joe said. "Even if it is only a regular comet, how do you survive against it-even if nothing else on the surface of the Earth will?"
The man was crazy, but he was all Bobby had. "I don't know," the boy said, uncomprehending.
"You make lemonade."
That night, as Bobby dreamed of running and running, his host sat upright a few feet away, comfortably ensconced in the reclining seat from a Lincoln Town Car. The ol
d man was completely still, unblinking, stolidly inert as a wooden Indian.
Imperceptibly at first, something began to happen.
It was as if Joe was having a seizure of some kind, his back arching and his mouth opening so wide it stretched his jaw past its limits, so that the joints could be heard popping from their sockets.
Now a thing like a weird flowering plant began erupting from his upturned throat, a branching, ribbed stalk, followed by a glossy pink orchid uncurling its petals-no, two orchids: a matched pair of unspeakable bromeliads that were the old man's inverted lungs. They swayed in midair at the ends of their bronchial tubes like twin cobras from a snake charmer's basket, seeming to have a life and mind of their own, billowing up with every appearance of unutterable bliss. Not just lungs, but the whole glistening contents of the man's body cavity were flowering up and spreading forth like a blooming bouquet. His carcass turned inside out, bones and musculature rolling back like a thick foreskin. Bobby didn't awaken even as the grisly mass arched over him, its nodules and clusters and veiny membranes trembling with excitement.
Grotesquely slow as it would have seemed to the perception of an appalled onlooker, the ghastly efflorescence was over in a matter of seconds. Before Bobby could awaken or react, the thing was upon him, enfolding his face in its violent moistness, prying him open with velvet pliers, gently gulping the boy's life breath in one heaving spasm, a miraculous convulsion that transformed the boy and restored the old man to his seat. An instant later, there was no sign that anything unusual had occurred.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE WHOLE ENCHILADA
Todd and Sal crossed back under the bridge, using the grandiose floating casino to screen themselves from the cargo barge. They could still hear gunfire and shouts of battle over there.
"Doesn't look like anybody's coming after us at least," Sal called across the water.
"Not yet, anyway."
Gliding under the shadow of the casino's superstructure, the boys felt slightly safer, less visible. The problem was getting on board: The gangplank was raised, and there was no other obvious means of entry. Todd took that as reason to quit right there, but Sal thought the big red paddle wheel looked climbable and persuaded the other boy to hold his Jet Ski steady while he stood on its seat and reached as high as he could-there! Once he had a handhold, the Xombie glove gripped tight, and he was able to swing his legs up. What he had not anticipated was how to get Todd up without also losing both Jet Skis. They had no rope to tie them with.
Making a snap decision, Sal hissed down, "Just wait for me here."
"No way, man. I came this far, I'm not letting you go in there alone."
"You have to. It's better this way-if anything happens to me, you can get back to Ray." He didn't wait for argument, climbing over the rail and hurrying across the deck. The main-entrance door was open, black as a cave.
There was no chance to scope out the situation properly, so Sal steeled himself and ducked into the open hatch, hugging the wall. All the lights were out. Remembering the layout from before, he knew he was in an antechamber before the main gambling room-a lobby and coat-check area with benches, potted trees, and a service counter. Hiding behind the plants, he peered deeper inside.
The place was deserted, dim and shuttered as an empty convention hall. El Dopa was nowhere to be seen, nor were any of those Kali goons. Muted sounds of shooting and other commotion filtered down through the open skylights, but otherwise there was no noise of any kind.
Keeping a low profile, Sal slowly made his way to the center of the room. The bed was still there, still unmade. It was actually an entire bedroom set, with a night table, a lamp, and a comfortable sitting chair. There was a thick book on the table: The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Once again, he thought the furniture looked like some kind of weird museum exhibit, set up on its pedestal in the middle of the room.
The deeper he went, the more convinced he was that the entire casino was abandoned, and this conviction was only reinforced when he tried the elevator and found its buttons dead. The power was out. There was a stairwell in the back corner, and he climbed up to the next level, a curtained platform that had once served as a lounge area and cabaret stage. Now it was half in shadow, and Sal could make out row upon row of silent machines-frozen gears and wheels and springs, power cables and truck batteries, all with no readily discernible purpose. It reminded him of the old textile mills he had seen during a school field trip to Lowell, Massachusetts-monuments to unsafe labor. The floor beneath was wet and stained black, and there was an odd smell that the boy associated with the submarine's forbidden third deck-Dr. Langhorne's section. It made his hair stand on end.
Continuing up, he found himself on the highest balcony, the last place they had seen Kyle. Feeling an intense need to pee, Sal scanned the offices and restaurant, the restrooms and kitchen, then cautiously made his way up the spiral staircase in the back. Had that face been a figment of his imagination? He was trembling uncontrollably-this was the only place left to look.
Emerging in a pitch-dark corridor with padded leather walls, he worked his way toward a cracked circle of dim red light. It was a broken window, a round porthole in a heavily padded door. No sounds from within, but something smelled really bad. Okay now, okay…
Working up his nerve, taking a deep breath, Sal pushed through and was struck with the full putrid stench, like burnt hair, burnt flesh. It was worse than when his mother used oven cleaner on the ancient crusts under the broiler, a foul, musky animal stench-the funk of pure, concentrated death. The walls and ceiling were full of bullet holes, like stars, and these bright constellations were the only source of light. In the red gloom, Sal could make out piles of blackened bones, human skulls, and possibly worse-he didn't stay long enough to find out. There was no need to: That charnel pit was all he needed to understand that everyone on this barge was gone. Surely and most importantly, the boy he was looking for was gone.
Gagging, weeping for Kyle, for himself, for all of them, Sal covered his mouth and rushed to the next door-the last door-
– and broke through into blinding daylight.
Sobbing, dashing across the breezy sunlight of the top deck under a canopy of paper lanterns, Sal vomited over the rail, hacking up his guts into the sea far below, then stood back and stopped in amazement. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he squinted across the water at a sight so astonishing and terrible that it shocked him out of his own grief.
A hundred yards away, the other barge was still at war, still fighting the Xombie invasion. Only by now its deck was literally covered with human remains, great crawling heaps of blasted, smoldering offal, an unkillable killing field. With hordes of fresh meat still coming over the side.
Hundreds of Reapers were lined up on the bottom tier of the cargo pyramid, twenty feet above the carnage and pouring gunfire down on the swarming invaders. The men had an arsenal of firearms laid out behind them, and gun caddies running back and forth, replacing weapons that jammed or got too hot to hold. The shooters had gone through an extraordinary quantity of ammunition, but apparently there was plenty more where that came from. The only danger seemed to be that the pile of creeping flesh would get so high that Xombies could use it as a ramp to reach the upper decks.
"Oh my God," Sal said.
The number of Xombies coming on board was nothing short of amazing-the riverbed must be packed with them. Scanning the whole panorama, his eyes were drawn to the highway bridge just a few hundred feet away, and he stared in amazement at thousands of Xombies choking the span and toppling over the railing into the water. Others were walking into the river from shore, running in like strange, spastic bathers and vanishing from view only to emerge minutes later over the barge gunwales.
Both tugboats had come alongside the embattled barge, and their crews were trying to cut the rope netting hanging over the side, which was the Xombies' point of ingress. In order to avoid being attacked themselves, they had to clear the gunwales with high-pressure fire
hoses. A man had managed to barricade himself inside the crane cockpit and was transporting others by sling to the tugboats and a dozen other vessels. Everyone was shouting advice and encouragement. It was also, Sal noticed, a beautiful spring morning.
Sal heard a metal scraping sound.
"Peekaboo, I see you," said a girl's voice.
He turned. It was Lulu Pangloss.
The Ex-girl was dressed in a sailor suit with the casino's gold logo embroidered over the breast pocket. She sat casually in a deck chair, her doll-like face preposterously blue, and her black eyes twice as large as life.
Sal faltered, his back pressed against the rail. "Lulu. Shit. What's… goin' on?"
Voice bright and bottomless, Lulu said, "Quite a view, don't you think?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Think of it as a humanitarian mission," she said. "Free inoculations. Bring the kiddies."
"I thought they… killed you."
"They wish." A smoky giggle.
"I'm looking for Kyle-do you know where he is?"
"I'm right here, bro."
Glancing up to the roof above the patio, Sal was struck dumb in the literal sense-he suddenly found it difficult to form words.
No, he thought. No-hell no!
Perched up there like a parade spectator, with his legs dangling over the side, was Kyle Hancock. The boy was not blue… but he was not human, either. Aside from the half-healed bullet holes in his head, there was an unsettling emptiness about him, a vacuum. Something in his X-ray gaze made Sal feel nakedly exposed, even in that Xombie suit. He couldn't make himself meet those eyes, but those thirsty eyes met him, and he could actually feel them probing and prodding like invisible fingers.
"What happened, Kyle?" Sal asked, mouth dry. "Where's El Dopa and all them?"
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